In July, the Committee on Sports and Physical Culture officially supported the initiative of the Qazaq Cybersport Federation (QCF) to expand cybersport disciplines to include competitive programming, QazMonitor reports citing Inbusiness.kz.
According to the QCF, the development of competitive programming is one of the priorities of the federation. Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation, and Aerospace of Kazakhstan also supported the initiative.
Competitive programming is defined as a type of mental sports that requires participants, called sports programmers, to code a given problem under certain constraints.
In Kazakhstan, events for this type of cybersports were scarce. They were mostly hosted by educational organizations: KBTU and MUIT in Almaty, as well as Nazarbayev University and Astana IT University in Nur-Sultan.
We are convinced that competitive programming will become a popular mass sport in our country, which is famous for its outstanding programmers. And we hope that eventually every educational institution, be it school or university, will offer it as part of the curriculum.
The Federation general secretary believes that in the near future Kazakhstan's programmers will be able to participate in international events.
"We are ready to cooperate with the IT community of Kazakhstan, given that competitive programming is a favorite activity for many. In general, we know that winners of such competitions often end up in large IT companies, so we're expecting something really exciting to happen. Besides, competitive programming in the long term can become another means of social mobility for the people", said a QCF representative.
In June 2018, cybersport in Kazakhstan was officially recognized as a sport. Since the summer of last year, Kazakh cyber athletes held their own tournament, which gained the status of a national championship - the Republican Cup of Kazakhstan for e-sports.